They were impossible to describe. She perceived though
that he had not expected an answer, because she heard him muttering to
himself that: "There was half a million's worth of work done and material
accumulated there."
"You mustn't think of these things, papa," she said firmly. And he asked
her with that invariable gentleness, in which she seemed now to detect
some rather ugly shades, what else had he to think about? Another year
or two, if they had only left him alone, he and everybody else would have
been all right, rolling in money; and she, his daughter, could have
married anybody--anybody. A lord.
All this was to him like yesterday, a long yesterday, a yesterday gone
over innumerable times, analysed, meditated upon for years. It had a
vividness and force for that old man of which his daughter who had not
been shut out of the world could have no idea. She was to him the only
living figure out of that past, and it was perhaps in perfect good faith
that he added, coldly, inexpressive and thin-lipped: "I lived only for
you, I may say. I suppose you understand that.
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